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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24810613">shriek</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/blooddrool/pseuds/blooddrool'>blooddrool</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Jonah Week [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Headaches &amp; Migraines, M/M, simon makes things worse before he makes things better</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 01:55:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,939</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24810613</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/blooddrool/pseuds/blooddrool</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonah can barely feel the thud of his own knees hitting the hardwood through the splitting, agonizing static that lights up the inside of his head.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Simon Fairchild/Jonah Magnus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Jonah Week [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789657</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Jonah Magnus Week 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>shriek</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Jonah Week day 5 !!</p><p>Prompt: Simon | "Power display" &amp; "Overstimulation"</p><p>( NOTE )<br/>simon's jonah-era name is giovanni, as established by... people who are not me lmao.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s something off.</p><p>They’re talking quite amicably when it starts, a niggling at the base of Jonah’s skull, inside it, and then just behind his eyes.  Giovanni has always been easy on the eyes but, in this moment, Jonah finds that it is difficult to look at him.  His eyes travel from Giovanni’s face, down his chest, track the fluttering movements of his hands, and Jonah can’t help but feel like he’s looking at something smaller than it should be.</p><p>It hurts.  Physically.  He opens his mouth to say–  Something.  Giovanni’s hand crosses in front of his vision and he tracks it.  Looks.  Sees the way that his fingernails are shorter than they ought to be, bitten down to the quick.  Sees the way that his cuticles stand out and away from the nailbed, like they could be peeled back.</p><p>Jonah looks further, furrows his brow, tilts his head. Giovanni is talking but Jonah has stopped listening.  There’s a whining in his head, rising in pitch.  It sounds like nails on metal, chipping flakes of paint away.  Jonah wants to see what the paint is covering, wants to see what lies beneath.</p><p>This is a bad idea, he realizes.  He wants to look closer.  The whining twists around in his head, takes a turn into shrieking.  He <em> can </em>look closer.</p><p>This is a bad idea.</p><p>But he <em> looks </em>and he sees–  Oh, he sees–</p><p>Everything.</p><p>Jonah can barely feel the thud of his own knees hitting the hardwood through the splitting, agonizing static that lights up the inside of his head.  It blooms, rings in his ears, and he scrambles to clutch at the side of his skull.  He forces his eyes closed but it doesn’t help. He can still <em> see </em> : images in movement where they should be still, strobing flashes of light where there should only be darkness, growing in intensity until they are <em> blinding </em> him.  Too much.  <em> Too much, </em> shining from the inside out — burning in the back of his brain, through it, following the path of his optic nerve like a spark hissing down a fuse.</p><p>Jonah pitches forward.  He only barely catches himself on an outstretched hand.  There’s a tickle in his sinuses, followed very quickly by the bizarre, warm-cool creeping of blood dripping from his nose.  One nostril, then both, running sticky in his philtrum, down his upper lip.  It patters on the floor, loud like cymbals clashing around his head.  His whole mouth tastes like nickel.</p><p>There are footsteps near him, sudden and shocking.  A creak of wood and leather that ribbons between his ears like audible lightning.  Jonah flinches away from it, ducks his head down into his chest.  It goes against his nature to try and make himself small, but he tries it now, tucking into himself if only to help with the pain.</p><p>The footsteps stop at his side.  The pain corkscrews upwards.</p><p>“Oh dear,” a voice says, and Jonah can feel the blood from his nose leaking into the crevices between his teeth where he has them bared, hard and sharp.  It’s Giovanni — who else would it be? — and the sound of him bears down on Jonah like a physical thing, worming its way inside, expanding outward like a balloon.</p><p>“Best put that away,” Giovanni tells him, “‘fore you take someone’s eye out.”</p><p>He’s laughing, Jonah realizes.  He’s laughing, and the shape of it colors his words warm like a fever.  Jonah squeezes at his head, digs his thumb into his temple until he fears it might break through, punch a hole right into his skull like some reptilian snout poking through the protective casing of its own egg.</p><p>A hand falls to his shoulder.  Jonah can barely feel it.  He feels like he’s about to crack open.</p><p>“Magnus,” Giovanni says, closer now, “<em>Magnus</em>, my boy, put it away.”</p><p>Jonah doesn’t know what he means.  Doesn’t know what he wants.  Doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  Doesn’t know what's <em> happening </em> to him.  He shakes his head — or at least makes some approximation of shaking his head before he’s forced to stop by the sickening motion of it.</p><p>Giovanni’s hand reaches to the back of Jonah’s neck, squeezes firmly.</p><p>“Fine, then,” he says, and Jonah can’t parse the grin in his tone well enough to be properly wary, “Open your eyes, Magnus, I’m trying to help you.”</p><p>Jonah doesn’t want to.  Doesn’t want to and knows better, really, but the pain is–  It’s–  It feels like he’s got a supernova inside him, stuffed into his cranium where there’s already hardly enough room for his brain alone.  He can feel every firing neuron, every jump of energy between synapses, bright and electric and entirely <em> too much</em>.  It feels like his eyeballs are about to fall out of his head.</p><p>He opens his eyes.</p><p>He opens his eyes and catches a glimpse of Giovanni’s knee, his thigh.  His hand constricts around the back of Jonah’s neck at the same time that his other flashes in front of Jonah’s face and–  And–</p><p>Jonah slams his hand back over his eyes, buckles impossibly forward.  The world folds around him, twists, expands, empties out.  The pain <em> explodes</em>.  He feels like he’s flying apart, crashing back together, his smallest, tiniest parts all shaking out of order, trying to rearrange.  Cellular.  Atomic.  And then bigger, bigger, bigger.  Back out and away until the whole of him is invisible and he can see <em> everything</em>.  Further, still, until he can see beyond the scope of exploration, beyond that of comprehension.</p><p>There’s a noise in his ears that he doesn’t realize is his own until he catches Giovanni shushing him.  His head hurts like it’s been trampled by a horse, then run over again the carriage it pulls.</p><p>“Alright,” he hears, “Alright now.”  Giovanni’s hand slides into Jonah’s hair, pushes at him gently.  Jonah goes with barely any awareness of it.</p><p>There’s a wetness trailing the length of Jonah’s jaw, down both sides of his neck.  He can hear his own breathing louder than he can hear the keening that comes from his throat.  He pushes his fingers into his eyes — presses hard, harder, until Giovanni’s hand wraps firm around Jonah’s wrist and pulls it away.</p><p>Giovanni does not ask him to open his eyes again, just coos at him like some wounded thing, pushes him down, down, until Jonah’s forehead rests against something warm and soft.  His hand in Jonah’s hair is not pleasant, is not <em> nice</em>, but it pulls in a way that the throbbing in his head does not.</p><p>“You’ll forgive me that little bit of fun, I’m sure,” Giovanni says, quieter, “Or, you being <em> you</em>, you won’t!  But you haven’t much of a choice now, have you?”</p><p>Jonah’s teeth feel close to disintegrating in his mouth.  The bones of his face feel like they’re trying to get on the outside of him.</p><p>“You have to put it away now, or it’s only going to get worse.  This is your own doing–  Hah, well: <em> mostly </em> your own doing.  You’re the only one who can control it, anyways.  Like a–  Hmm,” he stops, clicks his teeth together in that way that Jonah hates, the way that sounds especially awful right now, “Like ink from a pen, see.  The pressure and shape of it on the paper.  Lighten up on that pen now, Magnus.  Bring it back.”</p><p>Jonah tries.  He tries.  He doesn’t know how long it takes, hunched over there with one of Giovanni’s hands anchored in his hair, the other locked tight around his wrist, but he tries.  Giovanni mutters the most unhelpful things down to the back of his head, the smallest and most <em> irritating </em> things, but it helps.  It helps.  The noises and the lights ebb, pulse down smaller and smaller, softer and softer, until Jonah is present enough within his own mind to realize that his head is in Giovanni’s lap and Giovanni has begun singing to him.  Or to himself.</p><p>Jonah doesn’t know the song, only barely recognizes the language as Greek.  He realizes that Giovanni is keeping time with the tap of his thumb against the inside of Jonah’s wrist.  He also realizes that Giovanni cannot, for the <em> life </em> of him, seem to carry a tune.</p><p>“Wh–” Jonah starts, stops.  He swallows, cleans the blood from his teeth with his tongue, wets his lips.  Tries again, “What is that?”</p><p>His nose still trickles, slowing gradually.  Sitting up sounds like a chore.</p><p>Giovanni pets at him and releases his wrist.  “Oh, just something from my days as a boy,” he says.  He sounds wistful, nearly inappropriately so.  And then he adds, “Nothing to concern yourself with,” because he almost certainly knows that Jonah must now concern himself with it.</p><p>Jonah cracks an eye open, tentative, tucked there where it’s dark and safe against Giovanni’s thigh.  Safe enough.  Something twinges in the back of his head, like a twitch, but it settles just as quickly, leaves him alone with his breathing in the still and the quiet.  He gets his arms under him, lifts himself from Giovanni’s lap slowly — and hates that it <em> must </em> happen slowly.</p><p>“Up you come, now,” Giovanni croons, giddy and falsely good natured.  His hand falls from Jonah’s hair, cups his face instead.</p><p>Jonah sneers at him the moment he is able to, supporting his own weight on his knees and heels.  He wants to pull away, curse Giovanni for enjoying this so much, but Giovanni holds him in that way that promises steel and iron and strength beyond that which should be possible for a man his size.</p><p>Giovanni looks at him, smiling with mouth and eyes both, and says, “You look a mess, my boy,” and Jonah frowns and reaches up to wipe at his face.</p><p>The sticky smear of blood under his nose doesn’t surprise him, only displeases him.  The tears, too, he expected.  He is thankful they are clear and watery.  It’s the blood at the hinge of his jaw that makes him swallow, sudden and thick with an anxiety that lights him up from deep within his chest, leeching all the way out to the tips of his fingers where they prod at the trail.  He follows it up to his earlobe, over the piercing there, into the cartilage of his ear where it seems to have come from, pooled there and drying tacky in the opening of his ear canal.</p><p>Jonah pulls his hand away to look at it, fingertips stained rusty and dark.  He can feel his heart beating against his sternum, can feel it picking up speed in his throat and his temples.</p><p>Giovanni pats Jonah firmly on the cheek, and Jonah startles.  He forces himself to look instead to Giovanni’s face, lets his hand drop out of his sight.  There’s an expressive twist to Giovanni’s mouth that looks alarmingly like something akin to pity, and Jonah wants to bite it right off of him.</p><p>He wonders what it is he must look like to inspire such an expression.</p><p>And Giovanni drags his thumb over Jonah’s eyebrow, smoothing with the hair, and tells him, “Fetching as ever, I promise you, but you’re white as a sheet.”</p><p>“I have questions,” Jonah says — and says it entirely without his own permission.</p><p>The corners of Giovanni’s smile turn sharp, dangerous in the plain and blatant way that Giovanni only rarely allows.  Jonah wonders if it’s meant to make him feel afraid.  Or special.</p><p>“I’m sure you do,” Giovanni says.  He begins to stand, his grip on Jonah’s face firm and tugging, forcing him up with him.</p><p>“But first, lovely boy, let’s get you cleaned up.”</p>
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